Aspects of the present invention relate to social media and networks, and more particularly to a method, system and computer program product for selecting an embedded experience gadget for a selected event in an activity stream.
Many enterprise social software products, such as IBM Connections, Jive, and similar social networking products are integrating an activity stream of a user's social networking activity and an embedded experience concept into their products. IBM and IBM Connections are trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation in the United States, other countries or both. Jive is a trademark of Jive Software, Inc. in the United States, other countries or both.
The activity stream concept is based on displaying a descending chronological list of events for any actions going on in a user's social network or notifications that may be sent to the user. Adding an embedded experience concept to the activity stream may typically be based on allowing a user to click on any of the events listed in the activity stream and displaying a pop-up that provides additional information about an object that may be the subject of the event or that may be associated with the event, as well as, optionally providing an ability to perform actions on the object or perform actions related to the object. The embedded experience concept may include an embedded experience gadget associated with the object in the event of the activity stream. The embedded experience gadget associated with the object may be based on a type of object that is the subject of the event. For example, the embedded experience gadget may be an application or computer executable code for performing actions related to items or objects such a status update, a blog, a wiki, a forum, a file, etc. The embedded experience gadget may also be determined by the system where the event occurred or by the system that created the object. For example, when a Connections status update has been created, an event is sent to the activity stream with details about the embedded experience gadget that should be used for the pop-up. When third party sources contribute events to the activity stream, they will likely reference an embedded experience gadget that they are aware of. Therefore, the embedded experience gadget selection is typically determined based on the type of object associated with the event and the user or entity creating the event or the object associated with the event. However, a contributing source to a user's activity stream may not be aware of all possible gadgets that may be available and that may be associated with an event or object in an event as an embedded experience gadget. The embedded experience gadget that is associated with the event or object of the event by an originating system may not be of any use to the user with respect to performing actions related to the object of an event. This can cause frustration and inefficiency if the user has to search for a more appropriate gadget or gadget that perform the required actions.